A century-old water pipeline had burst throughout the intervening evening of Tuesday and Wednesday major to water scarcity all through the day at the Bandra, Santacruz, and Khar places of suburban Mumbai.
The leakage at the pipeline occured close to the Mahim Creek adjoining the Western Express Highway (WEH). In a video shared by the civic physique, hundreds of litres of water had been noticed gushing out from the pipeline in complete force. Local witnesses stated they had heard a loud noise about 1 am, quickly immediately after which they saw water operating out from the pipeline in complete force.
Civic officials informed, the pipeline serves as the most important water provide network, which supplies water from the Tansa Lake to the residential places of Bandra and Khar. Due to the leakage, water provide to the whole H-West ward (Bandra, Khar and Santacruz) was adversely impacted as the water provide could not be restored unless the leakage was repaired.
Officials of BMC’s hydraulic division had been deployed at the spot to initiate repair functions and it took practically 12 hours for the civic officials to repair the leakage.
“The pipeline is more than 100-years-old, the burst might have caused due to fluctuating water pressure” a senior engineer of BMC’s hydraulic division told FPJ.
The officials informed that repair functions had been completed about two pm on Wednesday afternoon and the water provide would be restored by evening.
“We had to turn off the valve to suspend water flow throughout the pipeline or else more water would have got wasted. The leakage repairs are completed and normal water supply would be restored by Wednesday evening,” the official added.
Local Congress corporator Asif Zakaria stated these living in the H-West ward had to bear the brunt on Wednesday as quite a few residential places of Bandra did not get water.
“The pipeline which had burst used to be the main boosting line of entire H-West ward. Many areas didn’t get water on the morning while some received water but pressure was very low,” Zakaria told FPJ.
Meanwhile, neighborhood civic activists and residents have blamed the BMC for poor upkeep of water pipelines. This is the second water leakage incident to have occurred in the previous week. Earlier on Friday, a water pipeline had burst close to Portuguese Church in Bandra which also led to water wastage of thousands of litres.
“It’s high time the civic body carries out pipeline audits at least once a year. This is the second pipeline burst incident in last one week, most of these pipelines are more than 100 years old. The BMC needs to adapt backup pipeline channels now,” stated Samit Sinha, a social worker and resident at Bandra.
“The BMC needs to install an emergency valve to control water flow at every pipeline or else thousand of litres of water will keep getting wasted like this,” stated one more resident requesting anonymity.